This species was originally only known from New Britain in the Bismarck archipelago (Böhme et al. 1994, Philipp et al. 2004). Study of museum specimens shows it to also occur in the northeast quadrant of Papua New Guinea, New Ireland (Ziegler et al. 1999) and possibly the northern tip of Queensland (the latter is based on a single, very old museum specimen without detailed locality data; S. Sweet pers. comm., Ziegler et al. 2001). A similar species often referred to as Varanus finschi occurs on the Kei Islands, southwest of New Guinea, but its assignment to this species is provisional (S. Sweet pers. comm.).

This species is often confused with V. indicus, leading to limited habitat information available forthis species (Philipp et al. 2004, S. Sweet pers. comm.). It appears to occur in forests and forages principally on the ground, in mangroves, lowland forest and second-growth forest (Philipp et al. 2004, S. Sweet pers. comm.).